Djuan Rivers, VP of Animal Kingdom Announces His Retirement
And the retirements just keep coming… Earlier today we here at MickeyBlog shared the news that Kevin Rafferty, a 40 year Disney Imagineer veteran was retiring. Now we’ve also received word that Djuan Rivers, Vice President for Disney Animal Kingdom theme park is stepping down as well. Rivers has been with the company for 30 years and has been in charge of Animal Kingdom since 2014.
As the Orlando Sentinel tells us, other positions Rivers has held includes Vice President for Hotels and Business Solutions at Disneyland Paris, Vice President of Disney’s Aulani Resort and Spa, Vice President of Downtown Disney and Vice President for New Business Development for Disney Parks. Rivers also served as General Manager at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge for a time!
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As you can see from the Instagram post above, Joe Rohde, legendary DIsney Imagineer who also retired in January shared pictures of Rivers saying, “As GM, Djuan was my partner in development of the Disney Animal Kingdom second wave which included Pandora, the World of Avatar! As you can see from the pictures, Djuan is a people person, warm, outgoing, plain-spoken and ready to laugh. I don’t know all of his next adventures, but for someone who has already run a marathon in Antarctica and done a high altitude-low open parachute jump over Mt.Everest….I’m sure it’s going to be impressive.”
![](https://mickeyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Djuan-Rivers-1.jpg)
![](https://mickeyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Djuan-Rivers-1.jpg)
Djuan Rivers, vice president of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, stands outside Expedition Everest in 2019. (Rich Pope / Orlando Sentinel)
As the Orlando Sentinel tells us, Rivers is an Orlando native and graduated from West Orange High School. Rivers holds a degree from Emory University in Atlanta. He is a world traveler and has visited over 70 countries.
We recommend that you follow along with Rivers post-Disney adventures at @djuanworldtraveler. Readers are also encouraged to keep following with MickeyBlog for more Walt Disney World news and updates.
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Source: Orlando Sentinel